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Sore tongue v sore thumb

I suspect this isn’t quite an eggcorn, but just a the use of the wrong word. Instead of “stood out like a sore thumb” the author in an article titled: “The Top 5 Body-Language Moments Of Election Day” on the Huffington Post used “like a sore tongue”

<quote>In body language terms, voice-flags are those vocal tones and tremors that communicate hidden emotions. Brit Hume’s voice-flag was the one that stood out like a sore tongue.<endquote>

Re: Sore tongue v sore thumb

There are several examples of this mistake on the web.

I would call it an eggcorn. Not perhaps a gourmet eggcorn—it is too infrequent, the sounds of “thumb” and “tongue” are a bit too far apart. But the re-imagery is strong. Sore tongues are certainly more in-your-face (pun intended) than sore thumbs.

Re: Sore tongue v sore thumb

Most peculiar… A sore tongue might gain some relief, I suppose, from being out – it can get a bit warm indoors – but when you accidentally bash your thumb you tend to hold it in your other hand or even stick it in your mouth (providing your tongue isn’t sore, of course). And there are 154 ughits for “a sort thumb” which could simply be a typo, unless the writers meant a sought thumb, but I can’t believe that the 164 ughits for “a saw thumb” can be anything other than eggcornish. It’s certainly clumsy, but a thumb you can see could be seen as a ‘saw thumb’ and it’s the digit that Roman Emperors and hitchhikers use for visual communication:

... being red any marks or fading showed up like a saw thumb so i popped down to my local car accessory shop where they recommended Carplan T-cut color fast …www.mklink.com/analytics.php – 34k – Cached

This personal body trimmer/Bikini area trimmer really will stand out like a saw thumb from the others. It removes the need for a razor and all the problems …www.prohaircare.co.uk/shop/Wahl_Pro.php – 79k – Cached

Re: Sore tongue v sore thumb

I like those: The saw thumb especially — though the saw=seen analysis surprised me and still seems a bit far-out. I thought rather of a thumb that’s had, to its detriment, an encounter with a saw (instead of the more proverbial encounter with a hammer—as in “he hit the nail on the thumb.”)

The “sore tongue” one, especially in the absence of other examples, coming from where it comes, and in the context in which it comes, I suspect of being purposeful—the author trying (whether successfully or not) to be cute.

A related blend:

That stood out like a red thumb.

So, of course, this may not stick out to you like a red thumb, but it does to me , so I just had to put that caveat out there.

I suppose you could wave a red thumb, too. I actually found an apparent example of raising a sore flag, but I suspect it was purposeful with a non-polite meaning. Another blend related to that one:

That rang a red bell in my mind

wouldn’t it ring a red bell of alarm in your mind if you saw a white substance on your child’s face?

Don’t those ring bells all up and down your spines? Or strike deep cords within your souls?

Last edited by DavidTuggy (2008-11-08 09:32:05)

*If the human mind were simple enough for us to understand,
we would be too simple-minded to understand it* .